All the Windows users know about the Alt+Tab and Win+Tab hotkeys using which you can switch from one open window to another. While these hotkeys work great and you are able to switch through the open windows, you have to do so one by one. So if you have five open windows, then you have to keep pressing these hotkeys (while keeping the Alt or Win key pressed all the time) to go from first window to the window you wanted to switch to – one at a time.
What if there was a function to switch straight from first window to fourth window in just one shot? This is exactly what the open-source program FastWindowSwitcher aims to achieve. This program is completely portable and does not require installation of any kind. After you launch the program, it sits quietly in the notification area and you can activate it using the hotkey Win+Y.
As soon as you press this hotkey, you will see different letters appear on all the taskbar icons belonging to open windows. Now you can simply press the respective letter to switch to that open window. For example, if you press K in the following screenshot, then it will switch to the Google Chrome web browser.
You can right-click on the FastWindowSwitcher notification area icon to access its settings. In the settings for the FastWindowSwitcher you can change the activation hotkey which is Win+Y by default. You can also change the font and font size used for displaying the letters for various icons in the taskbar.
Conclusion: FastWindowSwitcher is a very useful small tool that can save your time when you are trying to switch through open windows and find the window you are interested in. It is a surprise that Microsoft never thought of this functionality.
You can download FastWindowSwitcher from https://github.com/JochenBaier/fastwindowswitcher.
Big disadventage is that FastWindowSwitcher does not provide its own list of windows from which user can choose which window has to be switched to (focused). If case the user has chosen the taskbar to be hidden (the taskbar is not visible) and if a window required to be switched to is on background and is fully covered by other windows (other windows on foreground) the FastWindowSwicher provides no chance to switch to the required window (because FastWindowSwitcher is unable to assign a key-label to any not visible window).